Oceans
by CPsyche
Summary: For these privileged youth, happiness and sorrow are both as transient as ocean waves.
1. Beginnings

Old fanfic I'm reposting bc coronavirus boredom. Please enjoy! ^_^

And I don't own anything, let alone OHSHC.

* * *

Good morning. Or afternoon, or evening. Hello, how are you, is what I'm trying to say. This is the part where I introduce myself.

I have lived my entire life completely and acutely aware of my own privilege. I was born into a life of gilded plates and million-dollar jewels, summering in Europe and full-time nannies. My family is on first name basis with every major politician of the Liberal Democratic Party; we have invited their most prominent members to dinner. I have never wanted for anything, and I have hated every second of the sixteen years of my life. The very sound of my own name makes me sick. I don't think that most people understand what it's like to live like I have, and not in an adolescent, _oh-you'll-never-understand-me-mom! _type way. It's absolute hell. It's a living nightmare to exist on a plane where you don't know what's real and what's not, where everyone is fake to you, where you'll never be able to separate yourself from your family name, from the money that created you. No parallels exist.

My family is rich. These are the facts: We are one of the oldest-money of the old-money conglomerates, certainly in Japan, possibly in the world. This is the reason why people look at me when I go to parties, why their eyes follow me as I walk. I am the only child of the Inoue family, the heiress to the Inoue Group fortune. My father is old; my mother is old; they'll retire in a few decades. In other words, I'm a hot commodity. Parents want their sons to marry me.

For a certain type of child it could be oppressive. Stifling, really. There are feminist implications to it, something about capitalism and class and race, too. If I were a boy, would I have more freedom? Probably. If I were born in the States, if I were a white girl, would it be different? I don't know. I barely care.

I'm sorry for──all of this confusion. I don't know what I think sometimes.

My birth, my life, my family: these are the facts, and I've taken them and I accept them. At this point there isn't anything else for me to do. In all honesty, there's no out for me. What kind of escape would there be? Running away, starting a new life, living on the streets? That kind of thing was never an option for me, the one privilege I was born without. My family would track me down in an instant. Nor do I care, really, about that type of rebellion. It's funny, almost. The poor little girl who was too rich for her own good, and too philosophical to do anything about it. I've always been a passive child. I can read people, I can understand them, but I've never felt the urge to have control over my surroundings. I guess the gene just skipped me.

And besides, the only thing that disgusts me more than the abject privilege I live in would be the rejection of that privilege. The kind of girls that exist as humanitarians, the dutiful Christian youth who spend their vacations going on mission trips. It's absolute bullshit. It's so completely fake. The wealthy should accept their wealth, embrace it, flaunt it, because it's going to be there whether or not we pretend it's there. Better to understand your place in society than feign kindliness, performing charities that everyone can see right through. This is why I am happy the way I am; this is why I accept my place in the world-because it would be worse otherwise. I have no business as a teen rebel.

I am Sakaki Inoue, the dutiful heiress to the Inoue Group fortune, a Renaissance daughter, a pianist, violinist, cellist, flutist, painter. I'm clever, and smart, but not smarter than the man I'll wed. I used to play tennis; but I had to stop due to my weak constitution. I love nature. I love to read. These are the facts.

Father calls me into his office, tells me that next week I will be entering Ouran High School. For networking, he tells me. We both know what he means. There was an American guy, whose family had a biomedical enterprise going, but then their stock crashed. He was so charming the few times that I had met him. It certainly would have been a good match. But of course Father wouldn't have it, not after the fall. We're starting again, I suppose. Ouran is a great place to start again, Father tells me. It's a beautiful school.


	2. The twins

It's my first day of Senior High School. Donning my uniform this morning, I didn't know how to feel. I still don't. I don't think I've ever been around this many people my age; I didn't know this many existed. In the world of adults, of business and commerce, in the meetings that I would silently observe, my youth was always the anomaly. Being homeschooled was never something that I'd put much thought to, but inside me it had instilled a strange conviction, that I was the only one of my kind. It slowly cemented, probably, my ideas developed from when I was very young, about wealth and all that stuff, that filial duty. For such a long time I had been so solitary; it was a lifestyle for me.

And so it was surreal, psychedelic almost, to be surrounded by so many young people, drowned in a sea of sweet-smelling girls and boys. It's a baroque school, and the students are baroque students. My uniform is like a costume, a strange Alice in Wonderland piece, a delicate yellow dress with a Peter Pan collar and a thin maroon bow. Wearing it, I feel like a china doll, so decorative. Tokyo is millions of miles away; it's a different planet; it's a whole different universe.

They place me in Class 1-A, between the twins of a fashion designer and the daughter of a furniture mogul. During the lunch break, the twins speak to me.

"Inoue Sakaki," I tell them.

In their eyes I can tell that they recognize me; they know my family. I wonder if what their parents told them, when they realized that I was moving into their class.

They say simply: "Hikaru and Kaoru."

I don't know what else to say. "Those are beautiful names."

In unision the twins chirp, "They're common."

It takes me by surprise. Their pale foxlike eyes examine me with a strange half lidded expression. I examine them back: They are decorative twins, redheaded, with long elegant limbs and a dancerlike grace, with a villainous prettiness.

"And 'Sakaki,'" they continue. "How worldly. Our parents must've been of the same mind." They smile cruelly. It's a game, I realize, trying to make me uncomfortable. And it's very clever, too, subverting the whole vibe of this place, subverting propriety, subservience. They can afford to do it, too, if their fashion line doesn't rely on the investments of anyone here.

"Some of the most beautiful things are common," I say unflinchingly. "The rose, for example, is a commonplace flower. Yet its beauty is unmatched."

"Or a convenience store," one muses. The other opens up a gaming console and begins to play, stretching out lazily in his seat. "There's really nothing like going to a convenience store late at night. The lights, the hum of the machines. It's absolutely breathtaking."

"Getting a strawberry milk," I add. "The marvels of the modern world."

They're dissatisfied; I see it immediately. In their eyes is an affected, foxlike intensity. They're arrogant, mean, not because of their wealth but because of mine, the gilded pocketbooks of everyone here. They're bored of it; they're bored of everything. I can't tell if I like them, not really, but I'm thoroughly interested. Our conversation──it must've been a minute long, at most, but there was a kind of intensity to it, one which fascinates and confounds me.

"There's a club we have," they say suddenly. "It meets after school today. Do you want to come?"

"What kind of club?"

"We're hosts," they say together, almost expectantly. I understand that they're looking for shock, for astonishment. They must know by now that they won't get it from me. This is a game that they play regularly, a big middle finger to the establishment, poking and pushing to see how much they can antagonize the stiff and powdery youth of this school. It's really clever. It's really marvelous.

I wonder, suddenly, if I'm the first person they've met who understands what they're doing. It might be. The thought makes me pleased. They're intelligent; they might be the most intelligent people I've ever met, or at least the only ones who are really obvious about it.

"Hosts! How charming," I say, smiling flaccidly. "I'd love to come."


	3. Suoh

After school the twins take me to Music Room 3. It's a massive room, truly beautiful, a spacious ballroom floor, a high churchlike ceiling, gorgeous wooden detailing. The air is heavy with perfume, a tasteful floral fragrance with hints of musk. It's not just a baroque room; it is Gothic, Renaissance, Classic, Romantic, Rococo, Victorian, Tudor. The gilded whorls and spirals hold all of these elements, thousands of years of architecture, while retaining none of them. This space has a sexless elegance, the je ne sais quoi of hundreds of millions of yen spent on a room with absolutely nothing inside.

"What do you think?" the twins ask me after a moment.

I smile at them. "It's very beautiful." I don't know what I was expecting, but certainly not this. The exchange we had in the classroom was clever, irreverent almost, and I was looking forward to some kind of adventure. The gilded mirrors on each wall reflect one another back and forth, like infinity. In a way, I reason, this anticlimax is the reason why they've brought me here. It's less a host club than a private estate, the opposite of liveliness, the opposite of a drunken friends' night out, the opposite of life.

In the corner Suoh, the son of the headmaster, a sandy haired boy enrolled the year above me, plays piano. It's a Rachmaninoff melody, warped with the incredible passion of the pianist. His entire body moves as he plays, leaning into each note. It's captivating.

"Suoh," I call out. He stops and looks up, blinking at me with surprise, discombobulated. It was like he was shaken from another world, brought from one dimension to another.

"Hello," Suoh says, and his voice is smooth. He stands up with alien suaveness and makes his way towards me. "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you before."

He takes my hand and kisses it. Up close, I can see that he's clearly mixed race. The story was that he was born out of wedlock to a Frenchwoman.

"Inoue," I tell him. He looks at me expectantly: "Sakaki," I say finally.

"What a pretty name," he says, pleased. "And fitting for a girl as pretty as you." It's an act, obviously, a play at European charm. But it suits his slender build and strong features, theatrically attractive, more like a Greek statue than a real person.

The twins giggle. "Milord."

"I really enjoyed your playing," I say. "It was very emotional for me."

Suoh beams. "Thank you. I've loved the piano since I was young. It's always brought me incredible joy to have a natural talent for something that can bring other people joy as well." His response is gracefully arrogant, and it takes me aback. I scan his expression for irony, but there is none.

"Would you like to sit down?" He seats me and the twins at a pastel couch and goes about making tea for us. I watch Suoh openly, scouring his motions for some sign of fakeness, even though I can see the twins' eyes following me in the mirrored walls. He moves dancerlike, humming to himself. It's completely genuine. I realize: This is why the twins brought me here, for this theatrical European boy, the perfect headmaster's son. This is it, the joke they've kept for themselves, and that they're sharing with me. I had prepared myself to spend the next three years in a state of transit between childhood and wedded adulthood; in the shape of these cruel twins I have been gifted a new entertainment.

"Are you new to this school?" Suoh asks.

"Yes. I've been homeschooled for most of my life, but my parents wanted to enroll me here for high school."

"That's lovely. Are you enjoying it here?"

"Very much. I've had a wonderful time so far. The campus is gorgeous and I'm enjoying all my classes." I say to the twins: "And thank you for bringing me here. I was so worried about meeting new people at this school, and I'm so glad that I have such nice classmates as you two. I really think that we'll be really great friends, do you?"

They look up from their gaming console and smile evilly. One flicks his eyes: "Go ahead."

"Suoh," I call out. He turns. The room is empty save for the four of us. "I'd like to join the Host Club. If it's alright with you, Suoh."


	4. Ohtori

Suoh is ecstatic. "We've never had a girl member before," he admits to me, "but I'm sure we could find room. You could be our creative director! You have such an eye for the arts, certainly, if you liked my piano performance so much. Do you play piano? Crochet? Bake? Sakaki... I can't call you Inoue, not if we're friends like this. Don't call me by my family name either. Tamaki. My closest friends call me 'King.' Sakaki! You're going to have so much fun." The twins watch bemusedly from their perch.

"A creative director," I say pleasantly. "I'd really like that, Tamaki. What would I do?"

Suoh, or rather Tamaki, sighs. "I really don't know. The vice president is usually in charge of things like this, but he isn't here yet. I'm afraid that my presidential guidance is purely esthetic."

"The vice president?"

"Kyoya. He'll be here soon. Probably cleaning up after class, studying, curing cancer, doing something brilliant. You'll see."

The twins look up. "He's already cured cancer, don't forget," they quip.

"Kyoya..." I pause. "Ohtori?"

Tamaki looks at me excitedly. "Do you know him?"

"Our families are friends."

The door opens. "Speak of the devil!" cries Tamaki. Ohtori Kyoya is not handsome, but all of his features seem magical somehow, as if they'd been carved out of the same blemishless golden clay. His slick black hair, the narrow hawklike artisanship of his nose and eyes and brow, the colorless slit of his mouth, his tall sinewy build, all of these features came together to form a portrait of absolute purposefulness. On his struthian body, the school's light colored suit is like the uniform of a soldier.

"Tamaki. Hikaru. Kaoru," Ohtori says. "And hello, Sakaki. How are you?" His expression does not shift, but it's a measured stillness, the conscious effort of effortless calm. It pleases me greatly to see him struggle like this.

"Good. Just enrolled."

"I've heard. Are you enjoying it?"

"It's not really a matter of enjoying it or not. It's my duty to be here, and it's a duty that I'll fulfill regardless of any personal conviction I hold. That being said, it's a beautiful school. A perfect location, a gorgeous campus, all my classes are so wonderful. And the people are such humanitarians. I love everything about it. I wish I could stay here forever."

"How proletariat," Ohtori remarks bitingly. "I can ask my driver to pick you up."

I play with the handle of my china teacup. "I'm staying for now." The twins have subtly shifted in such a way to best watch our exchange, peering at us half liddedly. Identical clownish smiles dance on their lips. Slowly, one lifts a teacup to his lips and drinks deeply, emptying the cup. He places it back on the table, the clink of expensive china deafeningly loud in the silent room.

Ohtori sits down and pours himself a cup of tea. "You're with the club now?"

"Yes. Tamaki just crowned me creative director. I'm awaiting further instruction. From you."

"That's very nice, Sakaki, we're glad to have you joining. As for instruction... Would you like to pick our themes? Every week we have a cosplay day, where all the hosts dress up in themed costume. Sometimes it gets really delightfully eclectic. I think you'd be perfect for it. Your artistic databases are unparalleled, if I remember correctly."

"Thank you," I say. "It means so much coming from you."

"It's not an opinion," Ohtori states. "You should never be flattered by the truth." This boy... I recall: He is the master of meaningless words, a supreme conversationalist with the ability to go back and forth for hours, discussing trivialities with casual malice. A real natural asshole, you could say. If he weren't born the son of a medical conglomerate, he would have been a top notch politician.

This conversation is getting tedious. I start: "Your brother. Yuuichi." Ohtori does not move. "How is he?"

"He's fine," Ohtori says tightly.

"Still working at the hospital?"

"Yes."

"And his wife?"

"He isn't married."

"Oh. I could've sworn."

Ohtori watches me with his black eyes. "You must've been thinking of someone else."

"He's young, then? How old is he again?"

"Twenty-eight."

"Ah, it's coming back to me now. Yuuichi did med school on an accelerated path, right? So he's been at the hospital for a few years now."

"Yes."

"Such a hard worker. Truly dedicated. Word is that in a few years he'll take over the family business." Ohtori stiffens.

"He's staying at the hospital for now. To get more experience. Really enjoying it there, for another."

"That's good to hear. We should get together again, you and me and your brothers, just us kids. If Yuuichi isn't too busy now, saving lives every day. From what I remember though, he was a lovely conversationalist. So worldly. It's been so long since we've sat down like this, Ohtori."

"More than a year, certainly. Sakaki. You've changed a lot."

"Not much. I haven't even gotten taller."

"You look older."

"They tell me I have an old soul."

"So," Tamaki interjects. He's clearly uncomfortable from all this banter, . "It's so good that you two know each other. Saves us the burden of introduction. If you really stop to ponder though, we all know each other. From past lives. Sakaki, do you believe in rebirth?"

In the mirrors I can see that Ohtori and the twins are all watching me. My smile is sleepy, I shift placidly, crossing my legs. "Of course," I say to Tamaki. "Why wouldn't I believe that? I think that some souls are naturally bonded to one another with a strength that withstands time. So many of our relationships are just inevitable, in my opinion. There's nothing you can do to change the way of some things."


	5. Fujioka

Hi everyone, CPsyche here! I have finals coming up and won't be updating as regularly T_T ...

I think it might be interested to have this story operate in "real time" (since the super trippy passage of time is one of the campiest and imo best jokes in the manga). That is, if a week has passed since I've last written anything, a week has passed for Sakaki and the club

On a whim, here's a playlist that sums up my general sentiments around this story. (Songs I've been listening to while writing lol)

"Golden Light" by STRFCKR

"Tom's Diner" by DNA ft. Suzanne Vega

"Carissa" by Sun Kil Moon

"Monkey Gone to Heaven" by The Pixies

"SICK GIRL" by ABRA

"Жить в твоей голове" by Zemfira

* * *

The scholarship student confronts me in the library. A few days have passed since my appointment as the creative director of the club, and they've passed uneventfully: petty research and trivial classwork. Her name is Fujioka Haruhi, a delicate-boned child, pretty in a mousy, tomboy way, who walks with a short tense step. She's here from a public school, and her lower middle class upbringing reads on every inch of her person, from her scuffed loafers to the flyaway strands of her hair.

The fierceness with which I admire her surprises me. Fujioka is trapped within the walls of this rich kids' school with no blood, no family, no relevance. She came here, probably, under the conviction that her admittance into this school would change her entire life, that she would be slingshotted into the world of privilege and success. Every day she eats lunch in the library alone, studying. In my mind Fujioka is like Joan of Arc, fighting a battle which she can never win, failing and failing and stupidly never giving up. I want to laugh at her; I want to pity her; I know that to do all of these things is my place and that to be ignored is her place. Yet in the library when I look into her brown eyes I see no fear, only a strange look that I can't describe.

"Inoue," she says to me. "You're so clever. Let's study together." On the last two exams, mathematics and literature, I have scored first and she second, and I know that I owe her nothing. She sits down and opens her books.

"Thank you, Fujioka. I'd really like that." It is not me who speaks; it's something else inside of me which rises up and pronounces the words. We do not speak, but every now and then I look up and see her working silently, her thin white hands writing out a problem, her dark head bent over her notebook.

I want to say something to her. I want to cry out, tell her that she has no right to come to my table, or to be at this school. She needs these grades in a way that I don't, it's her future on the line, not mine, I have so much power over her. I want to invite her to my house, to eat at a restaurant, to go shopping, to show her my wealth, to show her the power she could never have. But I can't bring myself to move at all.

An hour has passed. "You've been watching me," Fujioka observes.

"Sorry," I tell her. "I've been distracted."

"That's alright." Fujioka smiles with such genuine kindness that I'm taken aback. There's no one at this school who hasn't shown her disdain or indifference; even our teachers despise her. With absolute conviction I know that she's the type of student to be treated with this coldness in her old school too, teachers who are confused by her and students who hate her for being better than them, like I am. And that coldness doesn't bother her, I can see that just as clearly, and she has no conception of how cruel we're all being towards her.

"Do you study much?" she asks me.

"Not usually," I confess. "Academic stuff usually comes easily to me."

Fujioka's laugh sounds light and pure. "That's so novel. I wouldn't expect anything less of you, with such a cool aura."

"A cool aura?"

"It's just an observation." She shrugs. "Reserved. You never participate in class but always get the highest marks. Everyone wants to talk to you, and when they can't, they talk about you. Most of the time people who are like that are super fake, but you don't seem like that. If you were, then you would've asked me about my grades, or my family, or something to make me feel worse, but you didn't. You really have no clue about how your acting. It's almost funny, actually."

I don't know how to respond. Finally I manage: "What do you mean?"

"It's just an observation," Fujioka says again. "I'm not trying to offend you, it's just something I thought."

I say suddenly: "Fujioka, you really don't belong here, do you?" The kind of conversation I would have with family friends, Ohtori, the twins, anyone from this school, so much tenseness and violence hidden behind a placid smile, that isn't a power that she has. It exists beyond her reach; it would never occur to her to speak in the cruel way that everyone else does; it's like she's from another planet.

"I guess so," shrugs Fujioka. "But I don't mind it."


	6. SS19

On Saturday I'm invited to the twins' house, which lies in the countryside, a cluster of angular modern structures surrounded by a spacious English garden. It's a strange house, not ugly exactly, but eclectic, quirky in a way that's usually antithetical to the exorbitant spending of money that a property like this requires.

Immediately when I arrive I am approached by their mother approaches me. "What a beautiful young lady," she says, her catlike features stretching into a broad flat smile. "Inoue? I've heard so much nice about you. The twins are very happy to have met you."

"I'm very happy to know them too," I tell her. I notice that her expression retains a degree of stiffness no matter what face she's making, the smoothness and subtle artifice of an expensive plastic surgeon. "Your house is beautiful."

"It's tasteless," Kaoru had told me beforehand. "It's an abomination." But rather I see in its strangeness a strange beauty, the high fashion ugly of a runway model, the grace of clashing patterns on a beautiful hanger. It's hideous, but masked under layer upon layer of expensive cost, the hideousness turns artful, intentional almost, just like Mrs Hitachiin's shows, the colors just slightly off, the clothing cut in an alien way, the freckled and twisted-lipped and stringy-haired models strutting. Over tea she told me: I held my most recent show in a series of many connected rooms, custom made out of lighted panels. It was a very modern set up, all crisp lines, very space-age. But the custom-designed rooms were special in that their walls sloped in, the rooms shrinking and going. Watching video footage of the show, the viewer would be made acutely aware of the subtle shifts of the room size, but anyone who had watched it at the physical location would only feel a sense of discombobulation.

Mrs Hitachiin told me that she wanted her clothing to be like a memory, just a little bit lost every time. She wanted people to wear her pieces and think that they were so close to knowing something. She wanted her clothes to mimic thinking, she said to me ferally, because real art is supposed to make you think.

"What did you think of that?" Kaoru asks me when their mother leaves.

I think of Mrs Hitachiin's stiff face, her haughty way of speaking, her thin actress' silhouette, and of the strange stories she told me of her different shows while she fitted me for a dress. It was an emerald green evening gown, with a dramatic blouson bodice and sleeves that gave the impression of a seashell or a long silk curtain. On my body the fabric looked like dark water, fitting shapelessly. In the large open back panel you could see my thin shoulder blades, the sinewy marks of my spine, and the lines of my waist in such a sensual way that I was almost disturbed when I looked at myself in the mirror. "Your mother is a very artistic person. I don't know how it'd be possible for me to live with someone whose work defines them so greatly."

"Fakeness," Hikaru muses.

Kaoru says: "Not fakeness, not entirely. Irreality. And it's not bad. All you need is to be aware of it, and then it's not that bad at all. It's like going to Mother's shows. If you know the secrets, the different shapes of the room, the lights that change suddenly from blue to pink and back again, the shifting landscape of it, and if you're conscious of it, you can think, 'This is when that's going to happen,' or, 'This is happening right now,' and there's none of that confusion. The way it is, it's like the tides of a wave, going in and out. And then it's not that bad at all, not if you're aware of the process and not controlled by it."


	7. Dinner

I wear Mrs Hitachiin's green evening gown to a dinner at the Ohtori family's Tokyo home, an elegant modern penthouse in the center of the city. On the ride there I watch pedestrians, observe their clothes, their manner, their white faces and black bodies. To them I don't exist in any sense more than the water that sometimes splashes up from the car's tires. I am just as nameless to them as they are to me. Sometimes it comforts me to know that beyond the dining rooms of the elite, I do not exist. Searching me up on the internet yields no results. My social media, when I used to have it, was private. There are no photos of me online. I am like a well-kept secret; I am like a china doll kept in a glass cabinet and never let out, hidden behind locked door after locked door, impossible to find. Sometimes this fact, the secrecy of my life, comforts me greatly, and other times it makes me feel alone.

The electric lights of the city cast alien reflections in the water that lines the streets; it has just rained. Quietly my parents discuss the Ohtori family and come to the conclusion that they are very nice and clever people.

My father and mother sit at one end of the table, and I sit at the other, across from my classmate Kyoya and his brothers.

"Sakaki," says the eldest. "It's been so long since we've seen you." Yuuichi carries himself with casual boheme, the effortless manner of someone who knows themselves to be brilliant. And he is, graduated top of his class at medical school in America, fluent in four languages, taking up Russian in his spare time, a superb golf player, captain of the soccer team in high school, set to inherit the largest medical conglomerate in Japan. Where Kyoya's angular features create the impression of calculating malice, Yuuichi is regal, the lines of his face and body crisp, nothing superfluous. His features have an uncanny blankness about them. I want to memorize the shape of his brow and nose and eyes and mouth, because it satisfies me in the same way that looking at a piece of classical art satisfies me, a pleasantness without character. When he speaks to me I find myself watching him; in the pauses of the conversation my gaze drifts to him. Yet the moment I look away I find that I begin to forget what he looks like.

"It's been so long since I've been here. This is a beautiful location. In my opinion," I continue, "it's very easy to have a beautiful home, architecturally, because all that takes is to have a lot of money. But to have a home in a beautiful location requires judgement, and intelligence, and opinion. The location of a house is what really speaks to its owners' personality."

"For esthetic purposes, maybe. But the location is an absolute nightmare for someone who lives here every day," Yuuichi complains. "I wish it were somewhere different. I much prefer our summer home in the countryside. The sound of people moving, it never escapes this place. It's impossible to work, to sleep, to do anything, without hearing thousands of bodies moving around, cars driving. Not anywhere in this building can you escape it."

Kyoya looks amused. "If anything, I like the penthouse all the more for it. It's an exercise in awareness, brother. To be aware of the people around you, to be aware of the society which created you. Cities are nothing more than the people who make them up. And being a doctor, as you of course know, brother, is a profession which requires nothing more than to love people. Living in this apartment has strengthened my desire to pursue the same profession as you do so successfully, because it has strengthened my connection to the people who I serve every day. The sounds of traffic, of people yelling, they are symphonic, really. I think that's what Sakaki was trying to say and I really agree with her."

"I afraid you've misread my intentions." I say confessionally: "Now that I think about it, it's really too loud sometimes. It's all good to have big ideas about other people, but at the end of the day it must be really hard to sleep." Yuuichi smiles amicably.

Over the course of the meal, we discuss many things: the second oldest son tells me about his gap year in Budapest, Yuuichi shares stories about his medical residency. I nod passively through each exchange, portioning out empty comments when they're necessary. Finally the conversation turns to fashion.

"Your dress," Kyoya points out. "It's designed by Hitachiin Yuzuha?"

I nod. "I met her the other day and she gave it to me then. She's the mother of our classmates, the twins."

"Her line has become very popular, especially among the critics, but I've found her most recent collection to be lacking," remarks Yuuichi. "It was uninspired to me. The models were lifeless, the setting was clinical, the whole atmosphere was like a hospital. And even though the collection was very beautiful, really one of the best expressions of minimalism I've seen in a long time, the aura of the show didn't match, and it ruined the whole thing. The overall effect was heartless, really depressing. I spent the hour looking at pretty dresses but came away with nothing meaningful."

There's nothing that I can say to defend myself, really, because he expressed his opinions in a way that was purposefully vague and which prevented response. I say stupidly: "I really didn't feel that way at all. I really didn't."

"I think," says Kyoya suddenly, "that clothing is not art, and that it's wrong to talk about them the same way. Brother, you say that the clothing was beautiful but the show was lackluster? There was no show. The show did not matter. The dress is elegant and suits its wearer well. What you wear is too much a part of everyday life to have value beyond function. In this case, for this dinner party, the function is beauty. But it is still a function. Clothing, in my opinion, can be beautiful without having meaning. It has no purpose other than to serve the person wearing it."

Yuuichi says solemnly: "It's a flattering dress and choosing it shows Sakaki's good taste. But really brother, I don't care about any of this argument. Artistic criticism, it's all a load of nothing. In the sciences, there is no room for big thoughts. I used to be much more thoughtful, very philosophical, but as I grew older I'm growing to understand that it's just a phase, something that I am better off growing out of. My duty to the world is to provide a service, and that service is medicine. There's no need for me to use the part of my head that you use so frequently." Kyoya looks down at his plate. It's a dirty move that Yuuichi made, bringing up the success of his career, and I can see plainly on Kyoya's face that he is wounded. Yuuichi's expression is blankly cold, sharklike almost, his features stonelike. And this argument, he is choosing to have it in front of me, he is choosing to let me see how he's better than his younger brother. In the pit of my stomach I feel a strong tugging; in my heart I feel a leadenness. Ohtori Yuuichi, the mean and plain-faced eldest son of the medical conglomerate, is paying attention to me in his strange cruel way, and I know that he likes me to at least some degree, enough to humiliate his younger brother in front of me. Every now and then my parents turn their gaze from their conversation to ours, and I know that their eyes follow him, because they are drawn to him in the same way that I am.

"That's very utilitarian," Kyoya says, "but don't you find it tiring to be so single-minded all the time? Don't you think that people are naturally inclined towards thinking about philosophical things?"

"It's very becoming towards women," says Yuuichi plainly. "But I've found that people in my position rarely have the time to devote towards both. People may be naturally inclined to think about weighty ideas, but if I have to think about the family enterprise, I can't do anything about God."

Kyoya asks: "Do you believe in God?"

"I've never thought about God."

"Never?" I ask. "Really?"

"Never."

"That's so fascinating. It's very Marxist, in a way."

"How?"

"It's like a religion of its own. Working hard, that is. Putting yourself into your work so wholeheartedly."

Yuuichi laughs. "Is that what Marxism was?"

"It was a product of it, under that kind of system, where everything was defined by work. The whole purpose of government was to regulate the give and take of everyday life. There wasn't anything that wasn't about work, in my opinion."

"That's something you enjoy, then?"

"I did a paper on Communism for class a while back."

"That's really interesting, Sakaki. You're really interesting."

"Thank you."

"You should never thank someone for the truth."

* * *

Kyoya confronts me when I leave to use the restroom. "Sakaki," he says. "Do you remember when we were kids? Once many years ago my family spent time at your summer home in the Alps. That's when I first met you, when I was twelve years old. I had just read Goethe then, the Japanese translation, and I was trying to figure out the German version of it. You too. You were really good at it. And we ran away and the nanny yelled at us."

"I remember," I tell him. I sit sideways by the windowsill, looking out into the blackening street. There's a group of people walking together, and even this many stories up I can see a few drunken members stumbling away from the main party, I can hear their laughing conversations. I smell their perfumed clothes.

I can tell that he's watching me, that his eyes are following the opened back of Mrs Hitachiin's dress. "Why are you acting like this?" he asks.

"What do you mean?"

"Yuuichi."

"It pleases me," I say plainly. "I enjoy talking with him."

"Are you trying to hurt me purposefully?"

I tell him: "I haven't been thinking of you at all."

"Sakaki..."

"Yes?"

"Listen." The words are painful for him to say, but he says them. "I know that you're going to marry him, or that you're going to try, at least. It'll work. You're a good match. It's a political marriage, it makes sense, there's nothing I can do to stop it, because there's nothing logical that I can present to convince anyone otherwise. But..." Ohtori's glasses flash broodily. "He's an asshole. He really is. You won't be happy, can't you see that? You're setting yourself up to get with a guy because your parents are looking to further their business. You're going to be miserable, you know that, please? Don't you? And... Come on! Say something, please! Say something... Sakaki..."

It takes me a long time to respond. When I do find the words, they are not mine. "There are bigger things in the world than my happiness. Ohtori." I am patrolling the streets with the group of friends; I smell like beer and sweat and I'm laughing. I can't stop laughing. I lean against my friend, who does not have a name, knowing that when we reach his apartment, we will make out and fall asleep together drunkenly, and he leans back against me. My face hurts from laughing so hard; my skin is warm from the good food that I have eaten; I am having the time of my life.

Kyoya's face breaks. "I don't see how you can say that with such a straight expression. Really, do you believe that? No one is that coldhearted, and not to a cause as dumb as their family's money."

I say softly: "I don't see how there's anything nobler than helping your family. I'm proud to do it." But it's empty words, it doesn't mean anything, it's just like the stuff Yuuichi said to me at dinner, barely words, barely language, barely anything, barely letters on a page, if I wrote them down they wouldn't mean anything, just empty. I'm about to cry, almost, and I don't know why. I don't know anything.

He kisses me swiftly on the forehead and then makes his way out. In this moment I don't know what I'm feeling. There's no words for it. I can only look out into the black city and let the windowglass chill me.


	8. Epiphanies

Sorry about the long wait lol... I was out for a while bc of vacation but I'm back now! Please enjoy this next chapter.

* * *

I don't know what to do anymore. In a daze I went home; like a ghost I laid in my bed and thought of nothing. The next few weeks I barely spoke, and when I did, it wasn't my voice that sounded. Time, and space, were for me a vast mothy curtain, a heavy film that I couldn't shake off. When I closed my eyes I saw the group of young people on the streets outside the Ohtori family's penthouse apartment. I was always cold. The skin on my back was covered with gooseflesh from the memory of Mrs Hitachiin's dress.

"Sakaki," Kyoya would say, looking at me and saying nothing else. I studied; I read; I ate; I slept. My Tokyo home had a swimming pool, and in my free time I would swim laps, back and forth. I didn't mean anything to me; there wasn't any metaphorical significance, though I wish I could say there was. I wish I was the kind of person to have a purpose. I wish I was the kind of person to capitalize on the beauty I saw. I wish that on that night at Kyoya's house I could have pushed open the window and thrown myself to the street. I wish that I could have gone to his room like we did when we were younger and locked the door and told stories to each other. I played piano for my parents' friends when they came over, but often when I was alone I couldn't bring myself to even get up from my bed.

"Are you depressed?" the twins would ask me, and I would look at them strangely as if the thought had never occurred to me, and I would smile mockingly as if they were dumb for even considering it, and that would be enough for them. They had the kind of personalities that compensated for me, whether or not I was silent. None of my classmates noticed, or I guess none who really matter, except for the ones that really did, if that makes sense at all.

Haruhi knew what had happened, probably. This was the kind of thing that she would understand without even hearing about it. "Talk to me when you're ready," she had told me.

It was raining when I finally went to her house. It was a heavy rain, the kind that takes away all sense of interiority, that wets your clothes and hair and sounds even when you're inside. Haruhi and I sat, the rain outside still chilling us, in her living room. The smell of wheat hung in the air. I told her: This period of my life, these few weeks of complete emptiness, was very monumental for me. At night I would have epiphanies. They would come like waves, one after the other. Most of them I couldn't remember when I woke up, like dreams, but there was one that stuck to me. It's still stuck to me: I would always talk about being nothing more than my family, but I guess I had never really viscerally believed it. Those days, when no one at school would treat me any different, when I would move and speak without any meaning at all and no one would even look at me strangely, that was when I realized how true that conviction was. Before being a person, I was the heir to the Inoue fortune, a series of words on paper, careful gestures and careful laughs and careful smiles, friendly but never too loud, mature but never dated, pretty and graceful like a dish of expensive china. Usually my conclusion to this series of facts was: so? It was my duty to fulfill my duty. It was my duty to sacrifice myself. But slowly that duty dripped away. I don't know what happened. I don't know why that dinner party, smiling along to Kyoya's brother's empty words, was the thing that did it, but it was. I don't know what I should do, I told her. I keep on saying 'I don't know,' but it's true, even though it really bothers me. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know if I'm allowed to do what I want to do, but increasingly, I don't think I care that much anymore. I don't know why I'm doing anything that I don't want to do. I'm the heir to the Inoue Group, I told her, almost pleadingly, and there's nothing that anyone can do to stop me. I can be one of those eccentric billionaires, a cat lady or something. Tabloids will love me. There's nothing that anyone can do to stop me. Who am I living for? Only myself. Who do I have debt to? No one, not even my family. My family doesn't own me, not in any really tangible way. They'll pay for my things, even if they don't want to. Soon I'll be an adult. I can go backpacking in Europe. I can go to university in America. That's what rich kids do, and it's what's expected of them. That's what I'll do. That, or anything else I want. There's nothing that anyone can do to stop it.

Haruhi took my head into her arms and touched my hair softly. All my memories from that period in time blurred together, and when I try to remember that moment, it's interlaced with the twins' laughter, the taste of pool water in my mouth, Kyoya's sharp features, and the lights of the city outside my room at night.

"Sakaki," is all that I can recall her saying.


	9. Endings

I know I haven't been updating much, but I (finally) have some time to write this chapter. I've been thinking abt it for a lil bit n I think that this is a good place to end the story. I'm not sure what else I could write for the characters. Looking back, this isn't really more of a fiction than a fanfiction, since it's very OC-focused, so sorry abt that haha. Please enjoy and have a wonderful day ^_^

* * *

I'm going off to university tomorrow, so Haruhi is coming over to help me finish packing. Honestly, I could've finished packing a long time ago, but I guess I just wanted to see her one last time. She tells me that she's going to grow her hair long. I ask her why, and she says that it's just a desire she has. We're both going to school in America, but that doesn't really mean that much, since I'll be living in Massachusetts and she in California. The States are almost bigger than Europe, did you know? I know that we can still see each other, that we can see each other whenever we want, but it doesn't feel like that.

"Sakaki," she says. "Goodbye." And I say it back to her.

That night, Kyoya calls me to wish me luck at university.

"I don't need any luck," I tell him.

"Everyone needs luck," he says grandiosely. "There's no such thing as living without it. Being born into your family is luck. Being smart enough to do well on exams is luck. Being conceived on the third planet away from the sun is luck. University is just another roll of the dice in a game, albeit one that's already going so much in your favor."

I laugh, because studying medicine has turned him to say silly things like that all the time. I tell him that he's changed, even though he promises me that he hasn't.

There is a long period where neither of us speak. Finally he says: "I think that everything in the universe has come together for this moment."

I don't know what else to say except that I agree, but I can't even say that. With my eyes I trace the shadows of his face, and we breathe and blink in unison, and together we stay like that for I don't know how long. When I wake up in the morning I see that he is logged out of the video chat. For breakfast I have tea and toast, and by then it is time for me to go to the airport.


End file.
